Was Deus Ex 2 really that bad?

Compared to the first one, yes it was. The story was nowhere near the quality of the first, being a sequel to a multiple-ending game, it kinda just mashed all the endings together and went from there. I did not enjoy the new portrayals of JC and Paul (who apparently canonically survived the first game).

Shared ammo was an abomination. Out of rail gun ammo? Out of everything!

The game was laggy. Like, I could move my mouse, and a half second later the game followed. Eventually that was patched.

The whole augmentation/skill system was given a HUGE downgrade. You go from 10+ skills and 10-ish augs to like, what was it, like 6 "biomods". Skills became passive biomods, augs active. But seriously, a huge downgrade.

Factions seemed cool at first, you could choose whose side to work for, and if you betrayed a faction, they threatened you, pretty awesome. Until they carried out their threat, sending just two thugs to their deaths and then pretending it never happened in later dialogue, i.e. they work with you again, bffs til the end.

Robot control was sick, though.

It wasn't bad at all, it just wasn't as good as the first one.

Neither was HR in fact, and HR being one of the better games in the last few years tells you just how shit most games are these days.

This! I thought HR was pretty cool as I was playing, though boss fights were annoying and instant takedowns were a bit of a turn-off. Then I went to that place, like in the ocean or whatever, and the side characters started giving me little speeches about life and the world and stuff and I was like, "wtf they talking like this for?" and then I realized that I was in the endgame and it hit me like a ton of bricks because it was so short!

But yeah, it seems that most of the effort in major game development these days is put into graphics, marketing, and exploitation/milking of the consumer.

Meh, I kinda enjoyed it It, Cairo was amazing.

No it was not bad, the problem was it was so much less than the first game which was almost criminal add to the fact the tech and level size suffered by porting it to the consoles the lack of memory meant the levels were tiny which basially limited exploration and ruined the game.

Add to that Unified ammo for all weapons, dumbed down inventory and skills.etc

It received an unfair backlash back then but on its own terms it's a really good game which stays true to the core of the franchise - which is allowing you to choose from multiple gameplay paths. Unified ammo, dumbed down inventory and skills are wildly exaggerated.

The game on it's own was good, but it was vastly inferior to original. Kind of like DMC2 was. BioShock was saved by the fact they turned it into new IP.

Plus Deus Ex 2 dumbed the hell out of original game and what was left didn't awe anyone the way Rainbow Six: Vegas did.

I played it on Xbox before playing the original and liked the shit outta it. still to this day i dunno where the hate comes from, game was fun as hell